PEOPLE v. CAMPBELL (2018)

Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Michael R. Sonberg, J.) rendered March 22, 2016, convicting defendant, upon his plea of guilty, of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, and sentencing him to a term of 90 days concurrent with 5 years' probation, unanimously affirmed.

The hearing court properly denied defendant's suppression motion.  There is no basis for disturbing the court's credibility determinations, which are supported by the record (see People v. Prochilo, 41 N.Y.2d 759, 761, 395 N.Y.S.2d 635, 363 N.E.2d 1380 [1977] ).  Evidence credited by the court established that the police recovered a quantity of cocaine by way of a lawful strip search (see People v. Hall, 10 N.Y.3d 303, 310–311, 856 N.Y.S.2d 540, 886 N.E.2d 162 [2008] ).  Reasonable suspicion warranting a strip search resulted from, among other things, an officer's detection of a hard object under defendant's pants in the area of his buttocks.  Furthermore, the search was conducted in a reasonable manner.  The court also correctly determined that the search did not rise to the level of intrusion of a visual body cavity search and that, in any event, a visual body cavity search would likewise have been permissible under the circumstances (see id.).

We perceive no basis for reducing the sentence.